Women and Politics

Women and Politics

Somewhat more than 300 years ago, John Knox, who did more than any man to mould the thoughts of his nationand indeed of our English Puritans likewisewas writing a little book on the Regiment of Women, in which he proved woman, on account of her natural inferiority to man, unfit to rule. And but the other day, Mr. John Stuart Mill, who has done more than any man to mould the thought of the rising generation of Englishmen, has written a little book, in the exactly opposite sense, on the Subjection of Women, in which he proves woman, on account of her natural equality with man, to be fit to rule. Truly the whirligig of Time brings round its revenges. To this point the reason of civilised nations has come, or at least is coming fast, after some fifteen hundred years of unreason, and of a literature of unreason, which discoursed gravely and learnedly of nuns and witches, hysteria and madness, persecution and torture, and, like a madman in his dreams, built up by irrefragable logic a whole inverted pyramid of seeming truth upon a single false premiss. To this it has come, after long centuries in which woman was regarded by celibate theologians as the noxious animal, p. 4the temptress, the source of earthly misery, which derivedat least in one casefemina from fe faith, and minus less, because women had less faith than men; which represented them as of more violent and unbridled animal passions; which explained learnedly why they were more tempted than men to heresy and witchcraft, and more subject (those especially who had beautiful hair) to the attacks of demons; and, in a word, regarded them as a necessary evil, to be tolerated, despised, repressed, and if possible shut up in nunneries. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 20433
Author: Kingsley, Charles
Release Date: Jan 23, 2007
Format: eBook
Language: English